Compare rsync backup times with USB drive and SATA drive

It pretends to be somewhere… Any choice you make, please be sure you can recover by hand easily, without anything except a “mount”. Nothing else.

That only matters for archives.
For disk recovery it is OK to depend on clonezilla, because it is short term… each disk image has about a 3 month life, then is replaced with newer ones.

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recover with clonezilla only ? Without your loved “I like to do it”, right ?

Yes.
Disk recovery is an entirely different thing to archiving
I agree with you for archives… that is why I use rsync… I can read its files.
Why would I want to read a clonezilla dump… it is mostly binary files anyway.

If you take your philosophy to the extreme, everything would have to be a text file.

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[quote=“Neville Jackson, post:44, topic:12578, full:true, username:nevj”]
If you take your philosophy to the extreme, everything would have to be a text file.
quote]
Why ? Git can manage that.
My backup system is much simpler: no change: hard link (no space used), file changed: new file/space allocated.
Pretty simple, rsync is great for that.

That is what borg does.
Borg is rsync with frightening complications

Because if you keep, for example, .odt files, LibreOffice would have to survive for you to be able to read them. People already have trouble with old wordprocessor files.

If you put stuff on Github, it goes in the Arctic Vault. That is about as survival proof as you can get.
It only takes one large geomagnetic storm and everything magnetically stored will disappear.

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Of course… But this is a different subject. We are discussing about accessing the files themselves, which is the first step to everything. I am currently in Kyoto, with my laptop only, and I can access my home machines backups in Brittany, with a simple ssh. No other software needed. But again, if your backup system allows you to access your files easily, go for it !

In Japan?

Yes file access is basic.

I am sticking with the mix of

  • rsync for archives of data
  • clonezilla for system backups
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For my information, what is “archive” vs “backup” for you (just to confirm vocabulary) ?

For me,

  • archive is for data files I want to keep forever. I have one copy in my computer , and one on external storage. I update the external copy with rsync in archive mode. I update as needed, depending on how active I have been.
  • system backup is for being able to recover my several linuxes from a disk crash or updating disaster. I image the entire set of disks to external storage with clonezilla about once a month. I keep about the last 3 months of images. Some people use Timeshift for this… I prefer to do it while no disks are mounted , using a clonezilla flash drive. I image everything, all OS’s and my data. I can recover one partition, or a whole disk.
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[quote=“Neville Jackson, post:50, topic:12578, full:true, username:nevj”]
For me,

  • archive is for data files I want to keep forever. I have one copy in my computer , and one on external storage. I update the external copy with rsync in archive mode. I update as needed, depending on how active I have been.
  • [/quote]

Meaning, these files can be deleted from source, right ? Not in backup ? (my important contracts are papers, in a safe, in bank: they will survive me).

Hum… Clonezilla does not save your “archive” data, right ?

No, I dont delete the source. I want to keep at least 2 copies, one in the computer, one on external disk.

I tell Clonezilla to save everything , including data partitions.
So I actually have more copies of data in the Clonezilla backups.
The primary aim with Clonezilla is to be able to recover an entire disk if it fails, including the data disk.
That said, it is possible , with Clonezilla, to recover one partition, if I mess it up, so it serves the secondary purpose of protection against upgrade issues.

I dont use anything snapshot utility like Timeshift.

Not directly from the archive on external disk. Clonezilla only saves internal disks.
But it does save the data because it is still on internal disk. The only thing it would miss is deleted data that is still archived. I only delete stuff I really do not want or where errors have been corrected and a new version made

Yes, like you, I dont keep personal stuff in computer . My computer data is mostly scientific data and software code. Really important code I put on Github.1

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Well, not very clear for me, and not the way I do, but I am sure you are confident with your data management…

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